THE MATCH THAT PITTED WHITE PLAYERS AGAINST BLACK PLAYERS

In 1979 West Bromwich Albion were looking for an idea for a benefit match for one of their longest serving players, Len Cantello. Somebody, we don't know who, came up with the idea of a match pitting black players against white players. Yes, really: blacks v whites, writes Adrian Chiles.

Warning: this story includes very strong language which some readers may find offensive.
It sounds somewhere between somewhat odd and downright appalling now, doesn't it? At the time, as I recall, it felt a rather progressive thing to do. After all we - I'm a lifelong West Brom fan - led the way in fielding black players. It seemed rather logical to push the envelope a little further and get a whole team together.
They remember the game with pride and great fondness. Batson recalls no controversy. "Nobody ever rang us up and said, 'Do you realise the implication?' Nothing at all. It was fun. In that dressing room it was just great fun." And all the black players I've spoken to about that day talk with feeling about that dressing room. Don't forget, all their lives they'd been outnumbered. Now, for one match only, they had a room of their own.

Having been an obsessed teenage fan in the 70s, I thought I knew all I needed to know about what my heroes went through in that era. How wrong I was. I've spoken to many of the players and I've been reminded of how simply awful it was, and bewilderingly complex too.

It made you angry... and go, 'Right we're gonna show you how good we are'

Cyrille Regis

The horror of thousands of people chanting racial abuse, with bananas raining down on the pitch, is straightforward enough to appreciate. Although I found the sheer in-your-face loathing quite painful to hear the players recall.
Bob Hazell and George Berry, brought in from Wolverhampton Wanderers for the match, are clear: don't believe any player who says they could shut it out. "You heard everything, trust me. You heard everything," says Hazell with feeling. Berry nods, "Every racial chant, you definitely heard. But only if you took it on board and let it affect you did it become a negative."
And there lay the trick of it - to take the abuse, and see it only as motivation to spur you on. "It made you angry but we learned to channel the anger and motivation," says Regis, "and go, 'Right we're gonna show you how good we are.' And that was our way of dealing with our anger, to think how we could hurt them. You did it with your ability."